Police: Man threatened to blow up CTA bus in ‘jihad’

A man threatened to blow up a CTA bus and told police he was “jihad against the white devil” this week, causing evening rush hour passengers to flee in fear for their lives, authorities said.

A judge set bail at $90,000 Tuesday for Caleb Russell, 23, of the 4700 block of South Woodlawn Avenue, who was charged with making a bomb threat, a felony, according to the Cook County sheriff’s office and police.

Russell was aboard a CTA bus that was westbound on Chicago Avenue at Orleans Street in the River North neighborhood Monday about 6:20 p.m. when officers on patrol saw the bus stop in the middle of the intersection, according to a police report.

Several passengers told police that Russell made derogatory and racial remarks and threatened to “blow this (expletive) up,’’ the report said.

Russell also began yelling racial slurs at responding officers and said he was “jihad against the white devil,’’ the report said.

After the driver pushed the panic button, numerous passengers who “feared for their lives’’ exited from the rear and front of the bus, the report said.

"Perhaps the oddest thing about the experts and police chiefs and reporters and editors and tenured professors who constantly tell us that these black-on-white atrocities aren’t racially motivated, is that blacks don’t believe that for a second. They know that they are racially motivated, they say so, and they celebrate them for it."
- Nicholas Stix